Basics

In C++, the string class is provided to help us manipulate strings and characters. A string can also be thought of as a sequence of characters. In C++, a character is denoted in between single quotes while a string is denoted in between double quotes.

Since we now know about arrays (tutorial 7), we can think of a string as an array of characters. Every character sequence in C++ is terminated by the null character, '\0' It is a back-slash and the number zero, not the letter o. This tells the program that a specific sequence is finished.

Below are some ways to declare a character array:

Example 1:
  char arr[20];
     Will declare an array of type char that will have a 
     capacity of 20 individual characters.

Example 2:
  char arr[] = "Hello";
     Will declare an array of type character with a capacity 
     to be determined by C++ (thats why there are empty 
     brackets).

Example 3:
  char arr[] = {'H', 'e', 'l', 'l', 'o', '\0'};
     Will manually declare an array of characters that are 
     terminated by the null character.

Let's observe what is going on here. Example 1 is the most common way of declaring a characeter sequence. It will reserve a space 20 characters long in memory, just like an array.

Example 2 will, internally, break up the string into individual characters. The length of the array will be 6 because of the null character and the inital 5 characters. The indicies of the array will go from 0 to 5.

Example 3 will manually declare the array into broken up pieces. The same applies for the indicies as example 2.

#include <iostream>
#include <string>
using namespace std;

int main(){

char welcome[] = "Welcome to the program!\n";
char message[] = "Enter your name: ";
char name[100];

cout << welcome << message;
cin.getline(name,100);

string yourName = name;

cout << "Thank you " << yourName << endl;

return 0;
}